Tag Archives: Gunboats

Item Description: Letter from Lieutenant-General Ulysses S. Grant, U.S. Army, to Rear-Admiral David D. Porter, U.S. Navy, asking that gunboats be positioned in both the Appomattox and James Rivers. Item Citation: Official Records of the Union and Confederate Navies in … Continue reading →

Item description: Sent from Acting Rear-Admiral Samuel Phillips Lee to Gideon Welles, who was U. S. Secretary of Navy, this telegram discusses military movements in the Fort Powhatan and Wilson’s Wharf region of Virginia, especially that of African American Union … Continue reading →

Item description: Letter, 30 May 1863, from George Washington Gift to his fiancee Ellen Augusta Shackelford, concerning the explosion that destroyed the gunboat C.S.S. Chattahoochee on 27 May 1863. George Washington Gift (b. 1833) was raised in Tennessee, and went to California some … Continue reading →

Item description: A letter written by John W. Taylor in Corinth, Miss., dated 11 April 1862, gives a detailed description of his experience in the Battle of Shiloh. More about John W. Taylor: John W. Taylor (b. 1837) was born in … Continue reading →

Item description: Report of Commander Rowan, U. S. Navy, regarding the construction by the enemy of three ironclad gunboats. To read more from the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Navies in the War of the Rebellion, click here. … Continue reading →

Item Description: Letter of 21 March 1862, from Richard Godwin Joyner to his mother, Julia Joyner. This brief and slight letter home is meant to reassure his family that all was well and to request a better pair of shoes. … Continue reading →

Posted inSouthern Historical Collection|TaggedEngland, France, Gunboats, Tennessee|Comments Off on 16 February 1862: Events crowd rapidly upon us and every moment seems full of history—The enemy are pressing us at every point and the crisis is also hard. Fort Henry on the Tennessee River has fallen and the enemy steamed down to Florence in Alabama destroying the shipping as they went